She cried out and attacked reflexively, a powerful wind started to spin around her body like a miniature cyclone and then picked me up and sent me back hard. I crossed the hallway in a split second, and my back slammed into the silver colored wall so hard it sent sheetrock dust flying out. Also the groaning sound of strained metal filled the air, as the thick reinforced metal wall beneath it slightly concaved to my body.
It scared the hell out of me, disoriented me, and sent my heart pounding in my chest. It’d also felt a little like someone shooting me in the back with a nerf ball. I’ve felt plenty of pain in my life, and I would again, but physical attacks just didn’t hurt at all anymore.
A loud klaxon sounded, perhaps Raymond had a panic button on his tablet. Or perhaps the damage to the elevator and wall had triggered it, or perhaps the security guard at the station had noticed the start of the deadly scuffle in the cameras. I wasn’t sure, but that wasn’t comforting either.
I hesitated a split second and chose to run instead of attacking again. My body swung around and away from the wall, and I flew down the corridor since it was faster than running. A lot faster. The turn at the T junction that led to the lobby door and ultimately the door outside is what screwed me over. I had to slow down to make the sharp turn, but before I could make it Mistral had recovered and stepped out of the elevator.
With line of sight, the air around me congealed tightly, and my breath and my body were frozen. I managed to turn my head enough to see her angry glare, like I was the bad one?
Raymond said, “Holy shit, didn’t see that coming. Guess he was right after all.”
I rolled my eyes, unable to refute that because I couldn’t speak or breathe. I couldn’t protest that it was their plans to kill me that drove me to this. I’m not even sure why it mattered to me in that moment, what the little piece of shit weasel thought.
I dug in deep, and I fought it. I think metal would’ve been easier to break through, but I poured all my strength and flight into going just six more feet. I knew she needed visual contact to maintain the air trap around me, and all the while I was slowly suffocating.
I made just enough progress to give me hope of escape, but the air trap around me started to cycle in a folding whirlwind. So, even as I pushed out of the trap, the trap merely extended itself while moving backwards as a whole until my body slammed into wall behind me.
It was like trying to fight my way through rushing water, but thicker, while at the same time being held in a vice of air. It didn’t hurt a bit, but I couldn’t escape it. It was the asphyxiation that was going to be the end of me. Point was, there was no escape. I was stronger than her air, but at the same time she just kept rebuilding the trap even as I slid through it at a snail’s pace.
I glared as she walked over, her boots clicking on the silver tiles as she looked at me with cold anger and a smugness that lit the rage in my heart. My heart pounded in my chest, and I started to see spots in my eyes from the straining effort and lack of oxygen.
I’d really had no choice, it was her or me, and I’d be long dead if I hadn’t exercised every person’s right of self-defense when under life threatening circumstances. But in that moment of terror, as the world was fading out and I was struggling for breath, that thought didn’t really occur to me.
I acted with pure survival instinct as I lashed out in desperation to save my life. My voice was worthless, but there was still that loud Klaxon of alarm that was filling the hallways. The alarm that had made my stomach sink just twenty seconds ago had become my lifeline. I focused on that sound, concentrated it and turned it away from me, amplified it, and sent it all at Mistral and only Mistral.
Absolute silence filled the hallway, except for the horrific scream that left Mistral’s mouth, and that cry was cut off suddenly with the sound of bones shattering violently, including her skull. It was awful, and disgusting, as her body started bleeding from almost everywhere at once, and she fell down with a wet and harsh slap to the ground.
I gasped in a deep breath and shuddered, as I fell to my knees and threw up. My stomach was empty, all that came up was bile. It was also the first time I’d ever killed a person, ever. I’d never even considered such a thing before, and every part of me flinched back from it. I gasped in several more breaths and looked up just in time to see a panicked Raymond dive into one of the other rooms.
I should’ve moved then. I knew there were more superheroes upstairs, a lot more. The heroes that worked for the government and in Excelsior city all worked and lived there. A second later it was too late, as I saw the lobby door open and two people in suits, at almost the exact same time I heard the ding of an arriving elevator.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I probably wasn’t, but the last thing I wanted to do was kill someone else. I flew down the hallway away from the elevators and the lobby, taking the third way to go into an area I hadn’t been in before. It was a mistake.
Along that whole corridor was nothing but super containment rooms, with the heavy vault doors, and it ended in a dead end about a hundred feet down. No windows.
I panicked then, as I heard the heroes running down the hallway and the elevator doors fully opening, and I wished I could hide. I desperately needed to be hidden in that moment since my escape was cut off.
A buff man in a dark blue skintight suit and a white blonde-haired woman in a pink and white skintight suit walked out of the elevator. The superhero looked down the long hall right at me as I identified him as Sentinel, a brawler, and the woman as Solar Wind, a fire wielder.
Then sentinel turned his head in the other direction, as Solar Wind looked down the hall at me, and the other two heroes arrived at the T junction. I had no clue who they were or what their abilities were.
Sentinel said, “No sign of her, anyone?”
I gaped down the hallway in confusion, and when I looked down, I didn’t see anything but the silver floor. My hand slapped over my mouth to prevent a gasp and my mind reached out to deaden all sounds around me, even my heartbeat.
I was invisible. It took me a minute to figure it out, my light power. I controlled light. The same way I controlled sound, I didn’t just generate light. Their tests hadn’t brought it out, because I’d never felt the need to hide myself. I was invisible, and silenced, but for the moment I was stuck there by my doubts, fears, self-disgust and self-castigation at Mistral’s death even if I’d had no choice, and everything else too.
One of the new ones said, “She didn’t leave our way, and we saw someone duck down this hallway.”
He looked to his left right at me, and then shook his head, “She’s gone. Could she have gotten in one of the rooms?”
Sentinel said, “Maybe. Go check it out, Sally and I will make sure she doesn’t get to the lobby.”
Sentinel and Solar Wind started walking toward the junction, as the other pair left it in my direction.
I finally had a hold of my panic, even if my stomach was still roiling, and I slowly levitated up to the ceiling and straightened my body out horizontally along it. I flew extremely slowly, between my invisibility with light and quietness with control over sound they wouldn’t see or hear me, but they could feel the air disturbance if I went too fast. I’d made enough mistakes, and I shouldn’t have hesitated earlier.
Maybe Mistral would still be alive if I’d ran for it while I’d still been back on level two.
Perhaps, but a darker side of me suggested in the silent vaults of my mind, that the world was a better place without that murderous bitch in it. How many supers had she killed? Innocent and traumatized supers that trusted she was there to help them, protect them, and guide them. How many times had she played executioner for a corrupt government?
I was shocked and disgusted by the random thought, but at the same time, I wasn’t wrong.
I hadn’t murdered her, it’d been self-defense to save my life. A life that I hadn’t forfeited through evil actions of my own. I was horrified I’d taken a life, but I also knew I was jus
tified in it. More than that, I’d brought justice to a killer, to a woman worse than what they feared I might become.
It was almost too easy to escape at that point. I flew leisurely over their heads and down toward the door to the lobby. The timing was almost perfect, because the door was pulled open again, and another team that must’ve been on patrol when headquarters alarmed started to come through. I slipped over their heads and out the door before it could shut again.
By the time the screaming guard called about the outer door opening by itself, I was long gone, high up in the sky, and out of the city. I was also fairly sure I’d exceeded the speed of sound, but no one would know it, because I’d smoothed the shockwave out before it got very far.
Which was useful.
I was also screwed. I was wanted. I had no idea where my daughter was, couldn’t go home, had no ID, money, or credit cards, and one of the largest manhunts in the history of the city was about to start. Woman-hunt? Person-hunt? Whatever.
Money and shelter first, at the least. I hated the idea, but on the run from powerful and deadly superheroes was no place for my two-year-old daughter. I had to figure it all out first, which meant leaving her wherever she was, for the moment. I was the good girl, and I had a pretty big learning curve in front of me. I could find her when the time was right.
Chapter Four
Stupid or not, I went home. It was just after four, the banks were still open, and I had hope that the accounts weren’t frozen yet. That kind of thing took time, hours at least. I was quick, five minutes in and out. First, I grabbed my old college ID and my checkbooks for the money market and checking. There wasn’t much in there, a couple of thousand all told, but it was better than nothing.
I tossed them into an old backpack in the outer pocket, and raided my dresser and the bathroom for brush, toothbrush, toothpaste and all that. Then my closet for as many changes of clothes as I could stuff in the backpack. All jeans, yoga pants, and casual shirts. I also made the painful decision to leave all my shoes behind, except for the running shoes I had on.
The only other things I grabbed was Wynn’s baby book and her favorite stuffed animal from among the smaller ones.
I smirked when I got outside and took off toward the bank without a single hero showing up. I wasn’t exactly feeling cocky, I was scared, but a part of me figured that they were still searching the building for me. Because surely, they’d have caught my escape on the many cameras surrounding the facility.
Suckers.
I wrote out two checks equaling just over two thousand, and I asked for all twenties. They didn’t even ID me because my signatures matched, which was probably a good thing, because my college keepsake ID had expired two years ago and going for my license on the ocean floor was far too risky.
Maybe I’d watched too much television, because after that I’d crossed the street to the Walgreens and started looking at hair dyes. I’d need a disguise once the hunt started in earnest. My super identity would be me, Christabel Moore, or so I’d assumed at the time. My old life and name was burned as they say. Clearly, my secret identity would need to be the new life I set up, not my super identity. At the time being a super wasn’t really even on my mind, I was more thinking that I’d start a new life, get a job, and raise my kid. I had no intentions of fighting another super again.
Somehow, get a new life that was off the government’s radar.
I already had a vague idea to find the mob or something. They could probably do that sort of thing, set up a new set of credentials. The local mob bosses were well known enough in the news after all, alleged mob bosses that is, and I had no fear of humans with guns. I also had the idea of contacting one of the more famous conspiracy theorists, which the local news had poked fun at more than once, about the government killing its own citizens.
Because the whole idea was absurd. Assholes.
Point being, surely someone so paranoid about the government would be able to help me. I was still pretty clueless back then, and I thought trying that first was worth the effort, before approaching criminals.
Still, it wasn’t until I’d picked out a blue-black color and had the box in my hands, when a different idea occurred to me and I put it back on the shelf and headed for the restroom instead.
If I could bend light around me, make light shoot from my hand, glow like a night light, perhaps I could change light even more subtly. No hair dye required. First, I looked in the mirror and imagined my hair to be black, which didn’t work. My lovely golden blonde hair which I was quite proud of stayed golden. Perhaps that approach was too simple.
Instead, I focused on the idea that my hair was absorbing the entirety of the light spectrum. My eyes goggled as my hair didn’t turn black so much that it turned into an inky void of nothingness. It took me a little experimentation to get it right. I stood in front of that mirror for almost a full hour tweaking with colors before I was satisfied, then I took stock of the results.
My hair was a shimmering midnight black, and my eyes were shifted from vivid blue to a piercing green color. I’d also darkened my skin by several shades, so it would look even more natural with the darker hair color as well as make recognition harder. My features had been a bit harder to change, but depth perception was affected by the light, and I could adjust the light that reflected off me. The usual soft beauty of my face was a little harsher although still soft, with the appearance of stronger cheekbones and a slightly thinner face. An appearance that cameras would see, not just people.
I was unrecognizable. I just had no home, ID, husband, daughter, and only two grand to my name. On the good side I was fairly sure I could spit on Sentinel and Raymond and they’d never know it was me. There was only one more detail I needed to take care of, my voice.
“Testing,” I said softly, and my voice came out incredibly seductive, so much so that I flinched. I fooled with it a bit more, until it was dulcetly pleasing but not at all seductive. It was just a bit higher than my normal voice really.
My power seemed pretty content with leaving things that way, once activated. Kind of the way I could just float when in flight. To that end, I focused on canceling it all, and looked at my blonde hair, blue eyes, and old face. Then I did it again, and again, and again, until I was sure I could duplicate it quickly and accurately each and every time, even without a mirror.
Then because I’m a geek, I did it all over again from start to finish, including the practicing, for reddish brown hair and almond eyes. Then as a dark brunette with chocolate eyes. Then as a light blonde with gray eyes, and even lighter and fairer skin than I naturally had. I spent about two hours in the Walgreens bathroom that early evening, but I had my real face, and four complete disguises of various shades of skin, hair color, and eye color with different features, and all of them with their own distinguishable voice.
Call me vain, but they were all very attractive, at least on par with my original looks. I wasn’t a great beauty or anything, but I had a pleasant face, and my tight curvy body had always drawn looks from the opposite sex, and some from my own.
Point being, with the four disparate disguises I’d be ready if one of them was burned, I could always make more if I got down to the last one. I walked out of the bathroom just after seven in the evening with my midnight hair and piercing green eyes, along with the slightly more severe features and skin tone.
The last thing I did at Walgreens was buy four visa gift cards and load them up with five hundred each. People hardly used cash anymore and it would stick out less. Plus, it was easier to fit the four visa gift cards in my pocket than a thick wad of cash. A hundred twenty-dollar bills made a hell of a stack.
I paused long enough to eat then, fairly sure that I was safe and invisible at least for the moment in my new disguise. I wasn’t really hungry, between grief, missing my daughter, killing someone for the first time, the harrowing close death, and my government trying to kill me. It was a lot to deal with, and that kind of thing stole the appetite.
&n
bsp; But my stomach grumbled powerfully as I took in the scent of dinner, and I ravenously devoured the blue cheese burger and went through two buckets of endless fries. Money, fed, looking different, and it was time to figure out the identification thing.
I couldn’t get a home, and get my daughter or get a job, not until I had fake ID, so that was next on my list. I also had no idea what was going on back at the mess I’d left at SAB headquarters, so I’d have to try to catch the news at some point.
I was in survival mode, and I wasn’t looking forward to the crash when I slowed down. I still had to finish grieving, and my husband’s death would weigh on me for a long time.
I still missed him, to this day.
Glenn Mason was a huge conspiracy theorist and one of the oldest supers alive being born in late ninety, about six years before I was. He was supposedly a psychic super with little power, while his wife who’d quickened in the same accident was one of the first few to have their power run out of control. Well, that was the official story, Glenn had maintained for years the government murdered her because she was too powerful.
The story had never made much sense to me before. I figured back then that if they had killed his wife, and he was having visions about it, why didn’t they kill him too? In the interview he’d explained he’d bided his time because he’d seen her die in a real time vision, and the only way to stop them was to keep his tongue until he was released. Some of the visions the psychic supers got were of the future, past, or present of a person or subject they concentrated on.
Regardless, he’d gone straight to the media after leaving the SAB, but the government had loaded down the press with scan data and other proof of what supposedly happened. He was proved a nutcase by what he said was falsified data.
Death's Mistress: Origins of Supers: Book One Page 5